The three best universities in Rome for international students (2023-2024)

Rome mixes modern metropolis with ancient history. What better place to hone your academic skills? These are the best universities in Rome for international students.

Bas Teunissen

6 minute read

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Updated on 22 Apr 2024

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Studying

There’s no doubt that Rome is one of the most interesting places in Italy, but what makes Rome such an attractive destination for international students?

To figure that out, we’re going to focus on the academic landscape you’ll find in Rome. We’ve selected 3 of these universities in Rome to highlight for you:

• Sapienza
• Tor Vergata
• Roma Tre

These 3 public universities in Rome are referred to as Roma I, Roma II and Roma III, respectively.

To help you distinguish an opportunity for yourself, we’ll focus on three of the universities’ most important aspects:

• Educational rankings: How good is this university compared to others?
• English language courses: How suitable is this University for international students?
• Tuition fees: How affordable is this university for international students?

We'll wrap up with some helpful insights about studying in Rome!

The Sapienza University of Rome is usually just referred to as Sapienza. It’s an ancient university, founded centuries ago back in 1303. These days it’s a prestigious university that educates over 115,000 students every year.

Out of those, almost 10,000 of those are international students! So once you arrive for your first lectures, you definitely won’t be the only one experiencing their first taste of living abroad.

La Sapienza is a prestigious university where many alumni include social and political elites, heads of nations and astronauts. As a result, La Sapienza has some pretty impressive rankings over the years. It’ll be no surprise to you that Sapienza has the best Classics & Ancient History programme in the world.

Out of its 287 bachelors and masters programmes, La Sapienza offers 55 programmes in that are taught entirely in English. So as an international student, you have 6 bachelor programmes and 49 masters level programmes to choose from.

The offering of bachelor programmes consists of:

• Applied Computer Science & AI
• Bioinformatics
• Classics
• Global Humanities
• Nursing
• Sustainable Building Engineering

The offering of Master programmes is spread out across the faculties:

• Architecture (5)
• Civil and Industrial Engineering (11)
• Economics (8)
• Humanities (4)
• Information Engineering, Informatics and Statistics (13)
• Law (1)
• Mathematics, Physics and Natural Sciences (6)
• Medicine and Psychology (2)
• Political Sciences, Sociology and Communications (2)

Despite its prestige, La Sapienza is a public university! This means that the tuition fees will be relatively low and subject to the ISEE income-based tuition fee reductions.

The maximum tuition fee at La Sapienza for both masters and bachelors programmes is €2,924 on top of the mandatory €140 regional fees. To find out how much you can expect to pay exactly, you can use the university’s fee calculator.

All in all, the lower the means available to you, the more affordable your tuition fees will be.

The Tor Vergata University of Rome, known as Roma II, is a relatively young university. Founded back when some of the first millennials were already born in 1982, it’s a university focused on the needs of the 21st-century workforce.

Tor Vergata is home to around 35,000 students, of which 6% is made up of international students.

The university goes for the liberal arts tradition as well as trying to replicate the same atmosphere students often associate with the famous universities in the UK.

For such a young university, Tor Vergata scores pretty well in the rankings. It’s already made its way into the top 500s, so it has a bright future ahead of it.

Out of a total of 106 courses, 22 are offered entirely in English.

English language bachelors programmes:

• Business Administration & Economics
• Engineering Sciences
• Global Governance

English language masters programmes:

• Art History in Rome
• Astrophysics
• Biotechnology
• Business Administration
• Chemical Nano-Engineering
• Economics
• Environmental and Territorial Engineering
• European Economy and Business Law
• European History | Scienze della Storia e del Documento
• Finance and Banking
• ICT and Internet Engineering
• Mechatronics Engineering
• Physical Activity and Health Promotion
• Physics of Complex Systems and Big Data
• Physics of Fundamental Interactions and Experimental Techniques
• Tourism Strategy, Cultural Heritage and Made in Italy

Tor Vergata is a public university, which means most students can appeal to the ISEE income-based tuition reduction. Rather than one flat fee, Tor Vergata uses 6 different contribution classes based on your course of choice.

There are also flat fees for students who can’t appeal to the ISEE reductions, coming from developing countries.

Two universities wasn’t enough for Rome, because by 1992 it was time they opened the 3rd public university in the city: Rome Tre (Roma III).

It’s now home to 33,000 students, 5% of which are international students. As a research university, it has over 75 masters programmes, 16 doctoral schools and 5 PhD programmes. Admission to the university can be competitive, as some programs, such as Architecture (200) and Law (1000), have a limit of how many students they accept each year.

Despite its extreme youth, being established in the 90’s, the university can already be found in the top 700s of the world. And out of 20,000 participating universities, that’s quite a feat.

While Roma Tre offers a large variety of course units in English, there are only 2 master programmes that are fully taught in English. They are:

• Biomedical Engineering
• International Studies

Access to other English language course units is arranged through the study plan and learning agreement for international exchange programmes like Erasmus.

Tuition fees at Roma Tre are based on your family’s income, as dictated by the ISEE. For both masters and bachelors programmes, you can expect to pay anywhere up to €2,469 in tuition per year. This is excluding €156 euros in regional fees and tax stamps.

Depending on how much you have to pay, you’ll be expected to pay in up to 4 terms of roughly €500 per term. So, if you’re due to pay €1500 in tuition, you’ll pay that amount over 3 terms.

As the capital city of Italy known for its service and tourist industry, Rome is not a cheap city. As we concluded in our Cost of Living in Rome overview, a student in Rome should budget around €1500/month to live comfortably in Rome.

Naturally, you can get by with less, but that would mean compromising on housing, activities and accommodation. The determining factor will most likely be whether you can find cheap student accommodation in Rome, as doing so could save you hundreds of euros a year.

The HousingAnywhere Rent Index shows the average rental prices in Rome as follows:

Rome is a city where ancient history and culture lie right below the surface of the mask of a modern metropolis. There are few places in the world that are more inspiring than Rome, even if you’re not going to Rome to pursue a study of history.

It’s this unique blend of Mediterranean culture with visible and tangible connections to history in combination with excellent academic institutions that draw so many internationals to the city.

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